Nuggets smoke the Bobcats a Gajillion to 80
By Editorial Staff
A gajillion, that’s Dr. Evil ransom on the world numbers. I think, if you listen carefully, you can hear JR Smith hit another three. Shhh, Wilson Chandler just got another mid-range jumper…Ty Lawson just stole the ball again, but how? The Bobcats left the game in the third quarter?
Miserable, horrible, unwatchable. I ended up on Comedy Central last night rather than watching the end of that, what do you even call it? A massacre would mean that the other team was killing them and Denver didn’t have but one guy score more than 15, and that was Wilson Chandler with 16! At one point I think George Karl let a ball boy take a few shots in game. 7 players in double figures, one with 8 and another with 7. Everyone scored for the Nuggets, including Kosta Koufos and Timofey Mozgov. Their +/- numbers look like they played against an AAU team or something, maybe the all-back-up AAU team that had never seen each other before and didn’t know how to run offensive sets or defensive assignments. Even Mozgov and Koufos had +14 each in their 7 and 10 minutes of playing time.
The Bobcats layed down in the middle of the road and let the Nuggets roll over them. It wasn’t like the Nuggets just looked like a world-class team, it’s that the Bobcats let them do what they wanted and they made them pay. I said at halftime, if Matt Carroll is your leading scorer, you got issues. I like that Matt got going a bit, but he had 16 at the half and then scored just another 3 in the entirety of the second half. DJ Augustin was second leading scorer with 13, but again, he only had 3 points in the second half. Shaun Livingston and Eddy Najera were the only Bobcats to score from the field in the final quarter, with Gerald Henderson and Dante Cunningham scoring one point each from the line. If it sounds like I’m listing facts, it’s because I am. I’m trying to pile up the reasons the Bobcats might have had difficulty, to put it nicely.
My eyes don’t deceive me. They couldn’t get anything going on offense. 80 points is a decent output if the pace of the game were much, much slower. They played at Denver’s pace, Denver scored, Charlotte didn’t. The Bobcats got more attempts than Denver, but the FG % is just ridiculous, 60.8% for the Nuggets and 36.7% for the Bobcats. I kept thinking “Denver will never keep it up around 60, surely they’ll drop in the upper 40s and the Bobcats can get theirs up and it’ll be a comeback.” I was wrong, hopeful but wrong.
The rebound numbers are astounding, but when you think that Denver was hitting at a clip roughly twice what the Bobcats did, the opportunity for defensive rebounds is cut in half, thus the 49-28 advantage for the boys from Mile High. Points in the paint, always telling of either a dominant big-man or a slicing back court. Turns out that Denver had both. Denver won that little battle 52-30, on the backs of Nene, Chris Anderson and Ty Lawson’s 14 points each. It was like a parade to the basket. The Bobcats bigs would get out of position, their man would get an easy basket off a Lawson or Felton pass or, the perimeter defender would play a little matador defense and let his guy get by and the centers and weakside defenders wouldn’t get off their man quick enough to stop a drive to the basket. It was too easy for Denver last night.
As we continue to plot the contributions of the new additions, Przybilla seems to not really care to score, like…at all. He had one attempt against Denver and ended up on the floor as much as planted on his own two giant feet. I mentioned that he seemed to be layed out more than most big men in the chatroom at BobcatsPlanet.com last night and someone suggested we nickname him “Crash.” I cried and we moved on. DJ White played 20 minutes, 17 in the second half (despite 5 fouls), scored 6 and had 5 rebounds. I raved about his post move in the first half but he didn’t have much more. Cunningham, possibly slowest to pick things up of the three, played 12 minutes, went 0 for 6 from the field and had that lone free throw made, the rest of his box score is empty, which is pretty much right-on if you want to sum up his night.
Now, the Lakers are up on Friday. They’ll be “up” for this game after everyone started questioning them nationally, following the Bobcats 20 point victory back on Valentines Day. They followed that by a massive loss to Cleveland, which simply compounded the situation. The Lakers have won 5 straight. Can Paul Silas get these guys straightened out? Or, will we see another 40 point blowout? That game will be followed up by a lot of hugs and emotional crap in Portland, no doubt. Saturday, the Bobcats travel north to face the Trailblazers. So, they have to get it together on this CIAA road trip. Luckily, the Sixers and the Pacers have both lost their last game. The Bucks are 2.5 behind the Bobcats and Detroit another 3 behind Milwaukee. So, the playoffs, somehow, are still within the reach of this team. Even 40 point beatdowns happen to playoff teams, right?